We don’t like to admit it but we do judge people based on the way they look. We shouldn’t and most of us try not to, but sometimes it’s impossible not to make a connection between the way someone has chosen to dress and the type of person we assume them to be.

The image above is a prime example. The woman wearing this combination of death-nails that hang out of her shoes and straining that stretchy legging stuff to breaking point could well be a Nobel prize winner who does rocket science projects as a hobby between sessions of teaching others how to deal effectively with their emotions, but that’s not the impression her attire is giving off.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t dress how you want. Everyone’s free to dress however they like, of course. What I’m saying is you should at least be aware of the impression you’re giving off.

Crazy bitch tip: If you don’t want people to think you’re a crazy bitch, don’t wear a crazy bitch outfit.

The quote has become abbreviated to “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best” and that shortened version has become part of common parlance in most English speaking places. This version is typically assumed to be understood as

“I’m not perfect, but if you can’t get past that, you’ll miss out on what makes me great.”

and I reckon that’s a fair and reasonable sentiment to express.

Warping the message

The problem is, that’s doesn’t seem to be what the people who are using this quote actually mean. So what message are the people who utter this quote actually trying to get across? My interpretation is that, usually, they’re saying:

“It’s not my fault if you can’t put up with how inappropriately I sometimes act. Get used to it or go away.”

That sentiment is not so reasonable to me.

Clearly, whoever put this eCard together is taking a different meaning as well:

The way I see it, everyone has their issues. Some more than others, and often that’s completely out of people’s control. There’s nothing wrong with having issues but there is a big problem when you choose to allow yourself to act inappropriately because of them.

Snap back to reality

I prefer this take on Marilyn’s quote:

At least it’s self-aware.

Woah, woah, woah!

But as I mentioned, there are many people making use of this quote to excuse themselves for their shitty behaviour. How’s this one?

As I always say, a man should never hit a woman, but also, a woman should never hit a man, or throw glassware at his head. I think we all agree that the man referenced in the quote shouldn’t hit the woman, but the question that comes to mind is… why the fuck was she throwing glassware at his head? Moreover, how the fuck has she convinced herself that the glassware throwing aspect of this scenario is not at least a part of the problem?

Your thoughts, Fresh Prince?

In the words of the great thinker, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air:

You’re being sexist!

In an effort to avoid being too male-centric with my thinking, here’s what Cate Gary has to say on the matter.

Cate makes some damned good points.

Firstly, just because you have good points, that doesn’t necessarily outweigh your bad points. Your bad points may be so horrible that you couldn’t justify them even if you were busy curing cancer the rest of the time. There are limits! I’m sure Hitler had some good points too, but they didn’t tally up against his whole “trying to exterminate entire races” thing, now did they?

Secondly, Marilyn was unbelievably sexy, but that’s pretty much all you ever hear about her. We don’t reflect on Marylin Monroe as a great mind of our time. In fact, you could argue that she is the original bimbo. While sex appeal has its own value, let’s face it… it’s 90% inherited through genetics. The reason we’ve all heard of her and seen pictures of her is because she had a fantastic body and a beautiful face, and she knew how to move in a seductive manner. No doubt she worked hard to keep her figure and to star in enough films to get her name so well known, but if she wasn’t blessed with her good looks I don’t think we would ever have heard of her.

In her own words

Check out this interview with Marilyn Monroe and make up your own mind.

So there’s not a lot about Marilyn that suggests that she’s a great role model for success. As Cate Gary mentioned above, it’s rather the opposite. No matter how you look at it, she had access to everything a person could want, but she wasn’t around long enough to enjoy it.

Here’s what she had to say when asked if she was happy:

“I’m genuinely miserable” – Marilyn Monroe.

Now, I don’t want to bag out Marilyn Monroe here, because the more footage of her I watch, the closer I get to falling in love with this long gone starlet, but it’s certainly clear that she wasn’t happy, especially at the end of her life, and that she would have preferred to be in a different situation. Perhaps, if she had addressed some of her self-confessed bad points, and not relied on people being willing to handle her, things might have ended differently.

Back to that quote

You don’t have to be at your best all the time, and it is fair to expect those who care about you to be understanding of your flaws and how you act when things get too much, but don’t go getting confused into thinking that they should put up with whatever you want to throw at them because you’re just so friggin amazing on your good days.

You have a responsibility to handle yourself and to remember that the people who love you shouldn’t have to put up with you treating them like shit just because that’s what you feel like doing at that moment in time. Instead of throwing glassware at your significant other, speak to a psychiatrist about why you get so worked up that you even want to throw glassware at your significant other!

Remember, even Marilyn Monroe ran into guys who wouldn’t put up with her shit.

Crazy bitch tip: Learn to handle yourself before you go expecting anyone else to put up with your bullshit.

Side note

The life of Marilyn Monroe is very interesting, and ultimately, a sad reminder that things aren’t always beautiful for the beautiful people. Check out this film about who miss Norma Jeane really was underneath.

What a shame to lose such an interesting person just because she had such a hot body.

Rachel Dolezal is a weirdo. That’s not a nice thing to say, but it’s unfortunately quite accurate.

WTF?

If you’re not familiar with the story, the short version is that Rachel Dolezal had been claiming to be black traded on that fact to help her get into the position of head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. That organisation, also known as the NAACP, fights for the rights of people of colour within America, and Ms Dolezal effectively used a modern take on blackface to get a high profile job within the organisation.

How do we know for sure that Ms Dolezal is not black? Her parents told us. Ms Dolezal was born two, ordinary, everyday Caucasian parents of German and Czech origins. There is no denying that Ms Dolezal is as Caucasian as can be.

There’s no denying it

Photos have also given us a pretty solid indication that she miiiiiiiiggggghhhhhtttttt just be white under all that tan and hair trickery. For instance, here’s Rachel Dolezal’s wedding photo:

Rachel Dolezal’s wedding photo suggests she is not of African heritage.

Ms Dolezal has had a lot of interaction with people of colour throughout her life. For example, her parents adopted some children who happened to be non-Caucasian. She thought of those children as her siblings, but they certainly did not ever think she was black.

According to her siblings, she did not think she was black until 2011

Here’s an example of her adopted brother’s opinion on her behaviour.

And another:

But she was a human rights activist, that’s good no matter how she got there, right?

Bullshit.

Rachel Dolezal’s behaviour is making a mockery of her position of the head of the NAACP chapter in Spokane by bringing ‘being black’ into question. If Ms Dolezal wanted to help people of colour get a better and more equal go of things she could done that just as well without lying about her race.

And now she’s come out with all this rubbish about believing she’s ‘transracial’ and she’s damaging the credibility of both transgender people anyone who might actually have a legit claim to being transracial. There are people out there, for example, who are considered ‘not black enough’ to be black by members of their own race, and that to me would trigger some serious difficulties which could potentially be labeled ‘transracial’ but just being endeared towards another culture does NOT measure up, and claiming that it does is a selfish and manipulative effort for Ms Dolezal to attempt to escape the scrutiny she’s under.

But she’s had the black experience!?

Fuck off with that rubbish.

Ms Dolezal claims to understand the black experience and have a deep, personal connection with being black, except she grew up white in a very white community and has only recently started to modify her appearance to look black. Even if Ms Dolezal has experienced a bit of racism directed towards her, if it all gets too much for her, she could just switch back to looking like a white person. That’s the difference right there, hers is a choice, a decision, a type of tourism.

Montel Williams is spot on here:

A person who is of African heritage cannot just switch out when they feel like the inherent racism they have to deal with is restricting their opportunities in life. They’re stuck with that and have to accept that the system is pretty shit, and that they’ll have to fight to be afforded the same treatment provided to Caucasians… and that’s exactly WHY THE NAACP EXISTS, and then an impersonator gets into the top job of the local chapter and even fucks up the efforts of black people to fight for their rights!

Can’t say I agree with Whoopi on that one. I think Rosie Perez is right on the money.

She’s a liar

Rachel Dolezal was caught out and she’s trying to lie her way out of it. The saddest part is there’s a lot of speculation that it was her divorce that pushed her into some sort of nervous breakdown, at which point she attempted to deal with it by changing who she believed she was.

I’m not judging the woman for having a tough time and that impacting her in a difficult way, but that doesn’t absolve her of the bullshit she’s been spouting since she was caught out.

Transracial issues may be valid or not, but Rachel Dolezal is not a good example. She’s a liar and is only concerned with getting away with being caught out and she’s mangling a whole bunch of bullshit lies together in order to get out of it.

Like this:

So there’s this thing going around about a trend called Free Bleeding. Free Bleeding is supposedly an effort by extremist feminists to continue their fight against their oppression under “The Man” by choosing not to use feminine hygiene products during their period.

You’ll see pics like the following on the web pages which are discussing Free Bleeding:

Fortunately for us all, Free Bleeding is a hoax. Thank whichever deity or non deity you thank in such relieving moments for that!

The hoax was created by users of 4chan as a means of screwing with the ‘Feminazis’ of the world. I guess the idea was to try to encourage the easily lead amongst them to actually go out and bleed period blood all over themselves as part of the new wave feminist movement. Here’s an article explaining the hoax. The trolls over at 4chan were really hoping it would catch on though, and they tried to drive the hashtag on twitter and encourage bloggers to write about it. Here are a few of the articles that ended up being written about it as if it were a legit trend:

There are a few photos being linked to this hoax movement, and they’re mostly coming from a VICE photo-set by Emma Bystrom which was intended to illustrate the embarrassment and shame that women go through in dealing with their monthly bloody buddy.

From “There will be blood” by Emma Bystrom

It appears that this is one of the rare occasions where I’m going out of my way to defend falsely accused crazy bitches. I stumbled onto one of the articles that took this trend as legitimate, and that left me to ponder if I really believed there were feminists out there that are so angry at men, that they’d actually walk around with their own period blood oozing all over them. Fortunately, I didn’t think that could be the case, so I hunted around for some proof to the contrary and, thankfully, found the details of the hoax. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a few of the of the more mentally unhinged, man hating feminists out there in the world consider it for a few seconds before deciding against it.

And that brings me to my thoughts on Feminism…

I’m going to do a post entirely about feminism at a later date because it’s such a massive and complex topic but, for now, I just wanted to point something out. In amongst the comments on the articles that thought Free Bleeding was a real thing, I was surprised to read comments from women defending the right of women to not use feminine hygiene products.

To consider yourself a feminist is a good thing. To live the way you like is a good thing too, but don’t just follow along with all the bullshit being spouted by any wacko claiming to be a feminist. Think about what they’re actually suggesting and decide for yourself if it’s really ‘The Man’ imposing something on you, or if it’s just how things are. This Free Bleeding thing is a hoax, but it actually comes from actual suggestions from feminists, such as this one I found in a blog post from 2012:

So enter the idea of “free bleeding.” More of a mindset than it is an action, the idea is, as this blog title gives away, letting ourselves bleed. No judgement, no worries about messiness or cleanliness. Just letting it happen.

This might look different for different menstruators. We are always, technically, “letting” ourselves bleed. There are no menstrual plugs (thank god). But how often do we take a second, or a few, or a whole menstrual cycle, to mentally let our body do it’s thing. And appreciate it for what it does.

Here’s an assignment: Get comfortable, wear something you don’t mind bleeding in (heck, this might even include a tampon! remember, this is about you and what’s comfortable for you) or lay on your bed naked with sheets you don’t mind bleeding on, and focus your thoughts on letting yourself bleed. – From Feministing.com (http://feministing.com/2012/08/27/letting-ourselves-bleed/)

So, as much as this is a hoax now, there have been people suggesting this FOR REAL in the past.

Be a feminist. Be proud of that. Fight for equality. Fight not to be oppressed because of your gender. But for the love of all that is good, please don’t blindly follow the rabid, crazy bitches out there spouting insanity under the title of feminism.

Crazy bitch tip: Choose not to bleed all over yourself, no matter what caused the blood in the first place.